The
Student BodyShort
Stories about College Students and Professors Edited
by John McNally

Contemporary short stories about
college life, by famed writers and rising stars

Fiction,
like life, has its lessons, and it’s a wild ride on the learning
curve when storytelling goes to school. The short stories in
this collection negotiate the heights, the depths, and the unexpected
angles of campus intrigue, sexual and intellectual awakenings
and reckonings, and all the heartache and hilarity of a sentimental
education. The work of such well-known authors as Stephen King,
Marly Swick, and Ron Carlson appears here as well as stories
by most promising new voices. The results are sometimes harrowing
(in King’s story, a serial killer roams a campus), sometimes
droll (in Lucia Perillo’s “The Wife of an Indian,”
an academic adjusts his ethnicity to get tenure), and often poignant
(as in Dan Chaon’s story of the aftermath of an accident that
injures a fraternity president.)

“This
wonderfully eclectic group of smart tales about professors and
students proves that on either side of the teacher’s desk there
are equal measures of yearning, trickery, passion, sorrow, and
comedy”Karen Stolz, author of World of Pies

“The
Student Body is a real education. These fine and often funny
stories by Richard Russo, Ron Carlson, and other teachers/writers
prove that academic writing can rank at the head of the class.”Rita
Ciresi, author of Pink Slip and Blue Italian

John McNally is
assistant professor of English at Wake Forest University in WinstonSalem,
North Carolina. His collection of stories, Troublemakers, won the prestigious John Simmons/Iowa Short Fiction Award.
A former Djerassi Fiction Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute of
Creative Writing, McNally is also the editor of High Infidelity:
24 Great Short Stories by Some of Our Best Contemporary Writers.

Media & bookseller inquiries regarding review copies, events, and interviews can be directed to the publicity department at publicity@uwpress.wisc.edu or (608) 263-0734. (If you want to examine a book for possible course use, please see our Course Books page. If you want to examine a book for possible rights licensing, please see Rights & Permissions.)

“A rich
and varied anthology that will interest creative writing professors
and students as well as the general public. Richard Russo’s powerful
story, The Whore’s Child, is worth the price of admission
alone; but there are other equally impressive and memorable stories.
I will definitely put this on my list of required books in my
fiction writing classes.”
Judith Slater, author of The Baby Can Sing and Other Stories